Every bit as successful as her first book, ?? Here, and possibly
even more so when one has read both and become thoroughly
captivated by a seemingly casual style that continually turns a
very charming present into a fascinating past. This is the account
of the second archeological dig, in Mesopotamia, for which Mary
Chubb was secretary and general factotum. She had no idea, on her
return from Egypt and a short walking tour through Greece, that
another exciting adventure lay ahead. Back in London, about to be
jobless because the Egyptology society could no longer afford her,
she was approached by Hans Frankfort who was heading an expedition
to Eshnunna, one of the mysterious city states of Ur so often
mentioned in old texts and about which next to nothing was known.
Frankfort and his co-workers, among them Thorkild Jacobsen and his
photographer wife, Rigmor, Seton Lloyd, the architect, and three
Americans, set out for Baghdad in the summer of 1932. In her book,
Mary Chubb has undertaken to account for everything from domestic
problems to the historical implications of the more exciting finds.
Two of these "subtle clues in a colossal detective story" were a
tiny elephant neal identical to another found in India and proving
the existence of a long, important trade route, and a figuring
making it highly probable that the Greek hero Herakles had strong
connections with the Mesopotamian fertility god. With her very
literate mind, her gift of intimate and witty expression and her
deepening appreciation and knowledge of ancient history, the
author's own spade work makes archeology a delight to lay readers.
(Kirkus Reviews)
Who are we? Where do we come from? What formed us? Why are we as we
are now? Today's world is amorphous and inexplicable without an
idea of the past, including the most ancient, its prehistory. Mary
Chubb's "City in the Sand", reprinted after 42 years, is about a
dig (and several peripheral others) in Iraq in 1932, sandwiched
between much shorter accounts of vigorous walking in Greece and
Crete with other archaeological friends before and after it.
Poignant thoughts arise of then and now in Iraq when she writes,
"The country was at peace, and a good man was king". Westerners,
welcomed and given concessions to dig in certain areas, could plan
well ahead and find skilled local labour. As secretary to the
Director of the dig, Hans Frankfort, a Dutchman she greatly
admired, Mary Chubb was part of an international group funded by
the University of Chicago as part of a vast plan of archaeological
discovery in the Middle East, stretching forward into the late
thirties. For what became a group not just of colleagues but of
friends, it was a time of excitement and intellectual richness,
shared and therefore doubled. The main task was the discovery with
what seems miraculous skill and luck of Eshnunna, an ancient vassal
city of Ur, and its complex uncovering - horizontal layers of
building, thirty foot down, sorted into their periods, combed in
minutest detail. It was heady work. Seals with which merchants
marked their wares told, for instance, how goods had arrived there
from India much earlier than anyone had thought; statues identified
ancient gods; inscriptions, ancient rulers. Beautiful jewellery,
beads, metalware, pottery, tools, artefacts of all sorts testified
to the sophisticated civilization which had ruled there. It was
dizzyingly exciting, the daily surprises, the sense of awe, and
Miss Chubb, an amateur writing for the general reader, though she
learn a great deal on the way, put across its fascination to the
non-specialist with detailed explanations from the specialists on
hand. Always it is what she calls "the human touch, a voice
speaking down the ages" that appeals most to her: the thought of
the man who held the seal "in his warm brown hand"; of the baby
whose perfect footprint was pressed in plaster "hundreds of years
before Abraham, away down in Ur, had gathered up his family and
belongings ...to set out westwards for his new homeland"; of the
thumb prints on ancient bricks; of the fearsome pear-shaped stones
bored through the centre, exactly like those still used by the
dig's basket boys as defensive weapons, now mounted on sticks;
underground for thousands of years, these wooden handles had
perished. As in her earlier book about her first dig, at Tell
el-Amarna in Egypt, "Nefertiti Lived Here", the emphasis in the
telling is also on the human story today - that of the team working
on the sites: archaeologists, architect, photographer, recorder of
objects found, reader of inscriptions, and Gabriel, the
indispensable odd-job man and driver who kept the show on the road.
Miss Chubb is a natural stylist, her writing vigorous, fluent and
graceful. Vivid images are slipped in with ease ("the muffled
pulsing of the ship's heart"), and descriptions of landscape and
weather, particularly in the lovely Greek and Cretan countryside,
turn one's heart over now and then. This, of course, is what makes
the book most memorable. The subject must fascinate all but the
most incurious, and to bring it alive in modern terms there is a
group of people in an atmosphere of comradeship, hard work, tough
conditions and enormous fun. But it is the writing itself that
really brings it alve: Miss Chubb has not just skill with language
but a novelist's way with people. The personalities, the day-to-day
life, reach us over 70 years as brightly as if they were (as she
is) still with us. So her story is not just of historical interest
but an imaginative re-telling of a human one, about young people,
their adventures and achievements, the desert and its terrors;
above all the past and its gifts to us in the present.
General
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